As per Microsoft: "The failure of the DHCP server to respond could be caused by network connectivity issues, DHCP server or DHCP relay malfunction, firewall issues, or a malfunction of your computer's network interface card or driver". See MSW2KDB for details.

See "IBM Support Document id: MIGR-58745" for additional information about this event.

When no DHCP server can be contacted it can also use the "Alternate Configuration". This is a user configured address instead of the automatic generated IP-address in the 169.254.0.0 range. The same event is generated.

Message generated when a computer is configured to obtain its IP address automatically (from a DHCP server) but no DCHP server answered the request. A random IP address (within the 169.254.0.0 range) is assigned to the computer. Check the availability of a DHCP server for that segment.